This comprehensive history of sixteenth-century Sweden has remained a standard work for English-speaking historians since its publication in 1968. It is now available in paperback for the first time. The book includes a full account of the reign of Gustav Vasa (1523–60), one of the greatest rulers of his age, and of the half-century after his death that paved the way for Sweden's emergence as a great power. Professor Roberts provides an account of the course of the Swedish Reformation: he analyses those trans-Baltic entanglements which were to assume such importance, both for Sweden and for Europe, in the next century; and he pays particular attention to the constitutional controversies which reached their climax, though not their end, with the deposition of King Sigismund and the 'Bloodbath of Linköping'.